Return to Inexpressible Island

The Antarctic Winter of 1912 has become known as one of the worst on record.

It was the winter that Robert Falcon Scott’s Polar expedition perished after having being beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen; and it was the same winter that a lesser known group, the Northern party, was stranded on a desolate snow drift.

As Scott was preparing for his journey to Antarctica, he invited 24 year old Australian geologist Raymond Priestley to be part of the Northern Party – Priestley's group would do scientific work and specimen collecting while Scott’s Polar Party journeyed to south.

The unprecedented early winter conditions meant that the Northern Party were unable to be picked up. The group then had to spend an unplanned winter in an ice cave on a windy snow drift they named Inexpressible Island. They then had to trek 250 miles back to Scott's base.

As a small boy Tony Fleming grew up hearing stories of this heroic Northern Party and the conditions which his grandfather Raymond Priestley had endured.